Encounters May 2018 Show

Once again, voted the best artists' open house

Encounters’ 2018 Edition

In May 2018, Encounters showed five aspects of Living Landscapes. These explored, through different media, the increasingly important and sensitive topic of Environmental Risks. As humanity’s power grows to reshape the natural world, we all need to become deeply concerned, and well enough informed, to care and to act from an emotional commitment. For this reason, Encounters sought to raise awareness and encourage proactivity that can mitigate environmental risks. We cannot be an outsider to our Planet.

In Encounters Art Space, we have a duty to indulge the senses and to challenge the imagination by our artistic endeavours. Also, we have a duty to share our feelings, expressed through a variety of artistic forms, as we are moved by events in the wider ecosystem.

This year, we were proud to present a show that has been enriched by the work of distinguished international and local artists. All of whom responded to their own deep emotions and found ways consistent with their own artistic natures to express their relationship with today’s living and dying landscapes. Their work provided this year’s show with a double quality: sensitivity and creativity.

Encounters’ show this year was an artistic journey with a purpose. Visitors began by being disconcerted by Rafael Barrios’ sculptures as his shapes seemed to challenge the laws of geometry and alter the observers’ modes of perception: questioning our beliefs about what is possible. The abstract paintings by Flor Troconis of Latin-American shantytowns or elevated favelas revealed a hidden orderliness and unexpectedly intricate patterns. Flor said: “mundane yet enormously interesting compositions are subjects for creativity”. Visitors indulged their senses with the work of Barrios and Troconis and left with a perception that new possibilities in volume and space exist.

The works next seen were Recycling Landscape by Fernando Adam, whose painting and sculpture is grounded by his meditative feelings on environment, time and space.

As a designer and craftsman, Fernando creates works that are a dialogue between natural and found materials and pictorial mastery. His ‘houses’ are unfinished objects floating into an ever-changing landscape. Undoubtedly, he recycles time and landscape.

The third line of Encounters’ narrative was Environmental Caring and Concern. Linda Lieberman’s work explicitly projected her profound environmental conscience. Her work is driven by the whispering voices of morality observing the deconstruction of the natural ecosystem. Also, Luke Macgregor’s lens found ways to illustrate an uncertain future that is looming for all of us, as global warming and rising sea levels mean that we will need to repurpose our possessions, dispose of our throw-away mentality and look backwards to look forwards.

The installation by Zsuzsanna Ardó and Miladys Parejo drew attention to inherent voids between manifesting a sane connection with the natural world and the prevailing cultural meme that sees the environment as, merely, an external landscape. Ardó questioned herself, asking: “What are the dynamics between the (perceived) centrality of the self and the (perceived) peripheries of the planet…” Parejo sought to deconstruct natural human responsibility and an alienated carelessness. The shared journey of these artists was realised by the installation ‘in the same boat, up-side-down’.

Visitors’ final encounter concerned the Transformation of Landscape. Noemí Márquez works are in continuous dialogue with the natural elements; she is irrevocably connected with the Earth, uses fire to transform her clay into statements of connection with the past, seemingly on a quest that is encoding eternity so that her works become permanent and sympathetic finger-prints on our World, as an ancestral reminiscence from the past to the present.

Our Artists

It’s not just an art exhibition...

Once again Encounters will be an unmissable destination in the West Hove trail. Local and international artists participate in an unexpected and curated show. The four weekends will be packed with interesting activities.